By day I’m the ‘senior engineer’ for a luxury residential construction company’s millwork department in the Austin Texas area . AutoCAD, Rhino, and Excel are the primary programs I utilize in my work there, and if you’ve never discovered the massive benefit gained by using keyboard shortcuts to enter commands in this sort of software, please let me emphatically invite you do so.
Keys Will Be Keys
There is a potential draw back I’ve recently found though. Those little locator tabs on the “F” and “J” keys don’t last forever, and when one of them got rubbed away, so did my fingers’ ability to orient themselves aright. Typing got pretty interesting at times—I’m dryioud, yypinh hoy sndoluyrly vtsxy when i finally looked over at an email I was typing and saw a bunch of grouped letters in the place of intended complete thoughts.
If you’re wondering, this post isn’t about how to use the built-in keyboard shortcuts of the programs I mentioned above, nor how to create your own. I do think anyone using design software should check it out if they haven’t already done so, but my intentions here are nowhere close to being that productive.
AutoLISP Isn’t Dead Yet
I’ve been using AutoCAD professionally since 2008, but about five years ago I was introduced to LISP. Specifically AutoLISP, which is one of a few built-in options for customization within the AutoCAD platform. While AutoLISP can take many years to master, it doesn’t take more than a day to utilize it for custom mapped keyboard commands, and command combinations. This is primarily how I use it in AutoCAD.
Where this option really shines is the ability to make combinations of commands such as setting a desired layer current, then invoking “line”, or “rectangle”, or whatever you need. These LISP functions can be super simple, or as complex as you care to dive in and program the function to include. It’s pretty handy to be able to draw whatever objects you may need, and already have everything on the correct layer. As well all the dimension objects on the correct layer and in the right scale! You might have guessed, I’m not a fan of drawing everything on “0” layer.
Maybe Now, Some Relevance
The co-worker who started me on the LISP train also went a little further with his method for laying out the specific key combinations used to invoke commands while drawing. Almost every command used is ‘mapped’ to one side of the keyboard. So whether I want to draw a line, a circle, dimension some object, or maybe make a common system variable change, my left hand can stay put while my right hand doesn’t have to leave the mouse.
It took a little less than three years of daily use, but since this command structure favors the left side of the keyboard, my “F” key tab has totally rubbed away. Of course, it’s also because “F” is a part of probably 70% of the commands I use everyday.
So there it is, just a lighthearted post—possibly wasted time—about how I ended up needing a key replacement in less than three years.
